This is shameful; it is NOT the America I was raised to believe in ...

Piecing Together an Immigrants Life the U.S. Refused to See

When the 43-year-old man died in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2005, the very fact seemed to fall into a black hole. Although a fellow inmate scrawled a note telling immigrant advocates that the detainees symptoms of a heart attack had long gone unheeded, government officials would not even confirm that the dead man had existed.

In March, more than three years after the death, federal immigration authorities acknowledged that they had overlooked it, and added a name, Ahmad, Tanveer, to their list of fatalities in custody.

Even as the mans death was retrieved from official oblivion, however, his life remained a mystery, The New York Times reported in an April article on the case that pointed up the secrecy and lack of accountability in the nations ballooning immigration detention system. Just who the man was and why he had been detained were unknown.

Tanveer Ahmad, it turns out, was a longtime New York City cabdriver who had paid thousands of dollars in taxes and immigration application fees. Whether out of love, loneliness or the quest for a green card, he had twice married American women after entering the country on a visitors visa in 1993. His only trouble with the law was a $200 fine for disorderly conduct in 1997: While working at a Houston gas station, he had displayed the businesss unlicensed gun to stop a robbery.

It would come back to haunt him. For if Mr. Ahmads overlooked death showed how immigrants could vanish in detention, his overlooked American life shows how 9/11 changed the stakes for those caught in the nations tangle of immigration laws.

In the end, his body went back in a box to his native village, to be buried by his Pakistani widow and their two children, conceived on his only two trips home in a dozen years. He had always hoped to bring them all to the United States, his widow, Rafia Perveen, said in a tearful telephone interview through a translator.

He said America is very good, she recalled. When it comes to the treatment of Muslims in the U.S., he had faith in the rule of law. He said, In America, they dont bother anyone just for no reason. 

Nobody says that the USA is PERFECT! It's just the BEST country in the world! No country tries and strives so hard to fix what is broken. Don't sell it short for its shortcomings. Too many people are still dying in an effort to reach our shores and also who still dream of coming here to live in spite of our faults.

Nobody says that the USA is PERFECT! It's just the BEST country in the world! No country tries and strives so hard to fix what is broken. Don't sell it short for its shortcomings. Too many people are still dying in an effort to reach our shores and also who still dream of coming here to live in spite of our faults.

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Yea LaLinda...Tanveer Ahmad is one of them...

America is a great country, but it is not always moving in the right direction...America is NUMBER ONE...in incarcerating human beings...

He said America is very good, she recalled. When it comes to the treatment of Muslims in the U.S., he had faith in the rule of law. He said, In America, they dont bother anyone just for no reason. 

When immigration agents burst into Mr. Ahmads two-room Flatbush apartment on Aug. 2, 2005, they were looking for someone else, his friends say  a roommate suspected of violating his student visa by working. But they ordered Mr. Ahmad to report to immigration headquarters in Manhattan on Aug. 11.

He went, and was delivered in shackles to the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold, N.J. His Texas misdemeanor had popped up in the computer as an offense involving a deadly weapon  reason enough, after 9/11, for authorities to detain him pending deportation proceedings.

He was a natural immigrant, friends said, the fifth child in a poor but striving family, the captain of his village schools victorious cricket team who grew into a funny and generous adult.

Then came 9/11. Friends and family, ringing my phone  You better watch it, you maybe married a terrorist,  Ms. Farrar recalled, evoking a period when hundreds of Muslim immigrants in New York were swept up on the strength of vague suspicions. I would bring it to him. He was scared anybody was going to hurt him.

By the time Mr. Ahmad was taken in handcuffs to immigration court on Aug. 17, 2005, all he wanted was to return to Pakistan. He insisted on giving up his right to contest deportation, even though he faced a 10-year bar on returning, said Kenneth M. Schonfeld, an immigration lawyer hurriedly hired by Mr. Ahmads friends, all cabdrivers from Pakistan.

He couldnt stand the thought of having to stay in custody, the lawyer said, and he seemed really terrified of the Monmouth jail. Its a place that would frighten or depress anyone.

As I said - America is NOT perfect. Compare this to the atrocities that are committed all around the world on a daily basis and you will find that inspite of this tragedy, we are still the most civilized nation -bar none. If there are wrongs to be righted, I have faith that this country will do it.

Nobody says that the USA is PERFECT! It's just the BEST country in the world! No country tries and strives so hard to fix what is broken. Don't sell it short for its shortcomings. Too many people are still dying in an effort to reach our shores and also who still dream of coming here to live in spite of our faults.

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OK Hannity.
Best.Most in debt. Most polluting and violent.Highest level of substance abuse and divorce.
Lotsa first places to be proud of.

They want to be on your welfare rolls.
If they really knew what it was like they would stay the hell home. Hollywierd is the drug they are after but never find.
I know a girl that moved to Charleston SC for a job as a bilingual legal a$$i$tant. She lasted 28 days and came home. Says you're all completely fuckin' insane.

"They call it the American dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it "Carlin

where do you get that idea? and on what do you base your definition of "civilized"?... you know, given that there are countries won't extradite death penalty cases to us because they think the government putting people to death is barbaric...

and most other nations provide health care for their citizens...

and if any other nation held an American for no reason and allowed them to die during their incarceration, you'd be screaming your little head off...

I don't know were this thread is going. As an example of bungling by federal authorities, maybe. Otherwise, it's meaningless. Of course America changed on 9/11. We all know how the terrorist cells infiltrated this country under false pretenses. I feel sorry for the guy. That thing about marring two women? But he ALREADY had a wife and children in Pakistan? Hmm. That is a tad questionable. Then that flashing an unlicensed gun issue. (I know, it wasn't his), SO? Ok. Perhaps, this poor fellow's death was a result of his lack of exercise and poor diet, not an oversight of the immigration system. Our fear of terrorism may be a little exagerated. Fact is, 9/11 was purpetrated by forien nationals that were as faudualent as Mr Ahmad. So, were does the fault lay for this?

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